In the end, the money men usually win, largely because we’re all human.

We have mortgages, kids who need schooling, and bills to pay. They say money can’t buy you happiness, but it can remove a great deal of stress from your daily life.

After struggling (or even thriving) at the helm of a craft brewery, it’s very tempting to take the money and run. No more worrying about making payroll, supply scarcity, increasing competition, new breweries poaching your employees, and the big one – at some point the Big Beer machine is going to make a push into your crafty little world and some breweries (maybe yours) will be crushed in the gears.

It’s like in the Terminator movies – you know SkyNet will soon become self-aware, and when it does, the robots will change everything. Your survival is anything but certain.

If you’re Elysian Brewing Company, which was bought by Budweiser last week, a briefcase full of cash and an end to all of the worrying about the future is a very tempting thing. All those hopes, all those fears, all those basic needs taken care of with a few signatures. Your brewery will survive, even flourish, in the face of uncertainty. Sure, you’ll be derided by a bunch of beer nerds, but what do they know? They don’t understand the business side of the industry – it’s not their butts on the line. You’ve got families to feed.

Besides, you tell yourself, maybe AB-InBev has seen the future, and has decided that crafting interesting beers that appeal to regular joes and connoisseurs alike is where this whole thing is headed. The craft beer segment is exploding in popularity across demographic groups, and by purchasing craft breweries and embracing craft beer culture, AB-InBev is simply embracing the future of beer.

That’s a nice thought, but nowhere near the truth. If Budweiser’s anti-craft Super Bowl ad told us anything, craft beer isn’t the future at AB-InBev, it’s the enemy.

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The Budweiser commercial in question (above) was so cartoonishly anti-craft-beer, it came off like a parody spot on Saturday Night Live. There were bespeckled men with well-coiffed facial hair “fussing” over snifters, snarky references to beers brewed with fruit, and an overall message that the world of beer is being pussified by limp wristed craft beer drinkers, and Budweiser is having none of it.

It was a call to war – choose sides, ‘Murica! Are you a red, white and blue pickup driving working man, or a whimpy little Prius driving craft beer quaffing poser?!!

Perhaps the most confounding part of the ad was that Budweiser almost specifically called out a beer brewed by Elysian (who, remember, they just purchased for millions and millions of dollars). “Let them sip their pumpkin peach ale,” the ad boldly proclaims, “We’ll be brewing us some golden suds.” Elysian makes a Pecan Peach Pumpkin Amber called Gourdgia on My Mind. Awkward!

Overall, the commercial makes AB-InBev come off as scared, angry and desperate to do whatever it takes to protect their flagship. It also makes you wonder if they have any real strategy for their portfolio of brands. Judging by this friendly fire incident, the answer is a resounding “no.”

As you might imagine, the ad came as a rude awakening to the folks at Elysian, who clearly just made a deal with the devil.

Elysian co-founder Dick Cantwell (the perfect name for an inept male prostitute, BTW) saw the ad while watching the Super Bowl with some of his brewers. Cantwell was reluctant to accept the AB-InBev offer in the first place, but he was hopeful that having ownership with deep pockets would help to shore up Elysian’s future. That hope quickly flamed into outrage Sunday night.

“I find it kind of incredible that ABI would be so tone-deaf as to pretty directly (even if unwittingly) call out one of the breweries they have recently acquired, even as that brewery is dealing with the anger of the beer community in reaction to the sale,” Cantwell said in an email quoted by The Chicago Tribune. “It doesn’t make our job any easier, and it certainly doesn’t make me feel any better about a deal I didn’t even want to happen. It’s made a difficult situation even more painful.”

Welcome to the AB-InBev family, Dick!

Now you might think that this backstabbing behavior will serve as a warning for other brewers targeted for acquisition by AB-InBev or one of the other brewing goliaths, but I’m not so sure. The resources and stability offered by Big Beer are incredibly tempting, especially if you think that they’ll simply acquire and support your competition if you say no. You could be left there out in the cold as other brewers bask in the humming warmth of the machine. If it’s going to happen anyway, why not be the brewery that benefits?

We’ll see how all of this plays out in the future, but it’s clear that the big boys are fed up with losing market share to craft brewers. The gloves are off and punches are being thrown, even if they’re clumsy haymakers like we saw on Sunday night. However you slice it, a player with the money and influence of AB-InBev can be hugely disruptive in the craft beer marketplace, especially if they are part of it.

2015 is going to be an interesting year.

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]]>https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2015/02/03/buy-em-and-blast-em-bud-reveals-anti-craft-beer-agenda/feed/20bud-elysian-quoteJimbud-elysian-quoteDelta Complicates Craft Beer Offering as Only an Airline Couldhttps://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/12/05/delta-complicates-craft-beer-offering-as-only-an-airline-could/
https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/12/05/delta-complicates-craft-beer-offering-as-only-an-airline-could/#commentsFri, 05 Dec 2014 20:09:48 +0000http://beerandwhiskeybros.com/?p=11110Good news: Delta Airlines just announced that they’ll be serving up a variety of craft beers on many of their flights!

Typical news: They’re doing it in a way that’s more complicated than figuring out how to use your frequent flyer points

Bad news: You have to fly with Delta Airlines to participate. (Sorry, this one was too easy – because it’s true!)

Delta has just issued a press release saying they will be offering local craft beers on select flights in a move that “continues the airline’s focus on bringing regional food, wine and now beer to the in-flight experience.”

Many of the breweries involved are widely known like Stone, Lagunitas, Brooklyn Brewery, and Ballast Point, while others (looking at you Newburyport and Blue Point) are beers with smaller regional followings.

It all sounds nice enough, but just wait until they try to explain which flights will be offering up the beers. From the press release:

The selection of regional craft beers are available on Delta’s West Coast Shuttle between Los Angeles and San Francisco; between New York-LaGuardia and Boston, Washington-Regan National and Chicago-O’Hare; on Delta’s transcontinental routes between New York-JFK and Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle; and on flights between Atlanta and New York-LaGuardia, Washington-Reagan National and Dulles, Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, Tampa and New Orleans. Samuel Adams is available on all other domestic routes in the U.S.

Got all that? This passage makes up almost half the text in the press release, so you know they thought it was important to share, even if it’s almost impossible to parse.

Thankfully, they also created the image you see above that lays out which beers are available on which routes in a fairly simple way. Unfortunately, they’ve made the image and text so small that it’s almost impossible to read. Even at the largest size provided by the airline, the image of their overly complicated regional craft beer offerings is a poorly conceived blur of maddening missteps.

Just like flying with Delta.

Maybe they should do what other airlines have done – offer up a selection of craft beers from the city where they’re headquartered. Frontier does this with Colorado beers, and Sun Country Air out of Minneapolis offers brews from Surly on their flights.

Then again, Delta is headquartered in Atlanta, so maybe they don’t have a lot of local breweries to choose from. There’s Sweetwater (whose 420 is being served on certain Atlanta-based flights) and…uh…Terrapin?

At any rate, it’s nice to see them try, and it’d be great to have the option of drinking a Ballast Point Sculpin IPA on the way to San Diego. I just wish they weren’t so “airline-y” about the whole thing.

While Don and I are both good at dreaming big, we’re not very good at being handy. One could blame this on genetic predisposition, or the fact that our dad had little patience for us fumbling up his honey-do projects around the house. We were terrible apprentices and likely wouldn’t have learned much anyway.

Whatever the case, the robot in the video below is EXACTLY the kind of creation we’d come up with if we set our minds to making a beer-pouring robot butler (and if we were Japanese and enjoyed shouty, annoying manga characters).

It’s a fun idea, it looks good, and it works jut like many of the things I’ve built around the house (read: not at all).

]]>https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/12/05/what-would-happen-if-don-and-i-made-a-beer-pouring-robot/feed/9robot-beer-pouring-failJimHumans Wasted Over 9 Million Years Not Making Boozehttps://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/12/02/humans-wasted-over-9-million-years-not-making-booze/
https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/12/02/humans-wasted-over-9-million-years-not-making-booze/#commentsTue, 02 Dec 2014 18:14:00 +0000http://beerandwhiskeybros.com/?p=11099A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that our human ancestors first gained the ability to consume alcohol roughly 10 million years ago. That’s when genetic changes made it possible for our primate forebearers to properly digest ethanol, that silly psychoactive substance we call alcohol.

But just because their furry little bodies could process alcohol, that doesn’t mean they made the stuff. Outside of occasionally foraging on fermented fruit, our monkey-fathers were teetotalers up until about 10 thousand years ago, when they started to brew spirits.

So basically, they wasted what could have been 9,990,000 years of productive alcohol making. Imagine the craft beers they could’ve come up with, festooned with lovely cave drawing labels. Wooly Mammoth Maibock. Tree Dweller IPA. A hunter/gatherer collaboration brew, featuring rendered free range tapir fat and responsibly sourced wild wheat. The hipster cavemen in their skinny furs would have loved that!

But instead we scampered around the freshly formed savannahs eating termites and drinking fetid water while trying to avoid being eaten by sabre-toothed tigers. And we think we’re so smart.

The study’s lead author was Matthew Carrigan, a paleogeneticist from Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida. His team searched humans’ genetic lineage looking for a digestive enzyme called ADH4 (short for Class IV alcohol dehydrogenases), which allows the body to break down alcohol and turn it into regrettable decision making.

Stone Brewing Company recently announced it’s opening the first American-owned craft brewery in Europe, located in an old gasworks facility in Berlin.

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As part of the announcement, a group of beer fans and European craft brewers gathered in front of the brewery’s main building and cheered as Greg Koch used a forklift to drop a huge boulder (you know, a Stone) on top a pyramid of watery European pilsners and lagers.

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The intended symbolism was clear; Stone will crush traditional mass-produced European beers. But what about the unintended symbolism?

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While on the surface it seemed like a fairly harmless way to celebrate American craft beer’s first beachhead on European soil, the act of destruction may have said more than Stone intended.

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It’s not in the spirit of craft beerStone posted a gallery of pictures documenting the event on their Facebook page, and amongst the majority of people who thought the act was fun and harmless, there were a few who thought it didn’t reflect the craft beer ethos of “may the best beer win.”

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“Nothing like promoting your brand by putting others down.” posted one beer geek. “Stuff like this that will make me turn my back on a brewery,” said another. Thoughts like these could be found in other places across Facebook, where users had shared the gallery on their own walls.

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It appears to be a waste of funds for a brewery begging for cash

Others on Facebook took issue with the fact that Stone has launched an Indegogo campaign to raise a million dollars to help expedite the brewery’s construction, yet they have the funds to publicize the beer-bashing, gather the crowd, and play with boulders.

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“Enough money for this stunt but still asking the public for a million to fund the new brewery?” asked one frugal Facebooker.

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While it likely cost very little to try and make a splash with the locals, some Stone fans seem to be counting every penny, which is a little silly – this was at the launch event for the brewery, a hugely important occasion to let the world know Stone has landed. It’s money well spent.

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It’s a little historically tone-deaf

A bunch of Americans once came to Berlin to “crush” the competition. Sound familiar? While it’s a stretch to compare smashing a bunch of beers to World War II, it’s perhaps not the best metaphor to introduce your All-American product to Germany. Also, there’s something a little foreboding about a crowd of people rallying in Berlin to symbolically destroy products whose ideology they don’t agree with. They did that 75 years ago in Germany – I saw it in an Indiana Jones movie.

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I’m not saying that this little stunt was in any way close to a Nazi book burning (that’s a little dramatic!) or that it may have dredged up the horrors of World War II, but choosing to exclaim their arrival in such a manner gives the impression that Stone may be stone deaf when it comes to understanding the history and culture of the market they’ve just entered.

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Have the locals by, share some beers, talk about bringing bold flavors to Europe, roast a pig, plant a cherry tree, go wild, be rebels, whatever. There are lots of ways to announce you’ve arrived without going beer bowling with a boulder. As a matter of fact, this little gag was a tiny part of Greg’s well-crafted message at the event (you can read his speech here), and he could’ve made just as big of a splash without it.

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Stone will be Stone

All-in-all, I think this was a harmless little bit of fun, a chance for a brewery whose beers have words like “arrogant” and “self-righteous” in their names to introduce their swaggering, irreverent attitude to market full of conservative and traditional products.

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But they should be thoughtful about how they express themselves as they enter an entirely new culture – sometimes when you seek as much attention as Stone does, you attract the wrong kind.

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So what do you think? Was this a cool way to introduce ze Germans to Stone’s punk-rock attitude? A waste of beer? In poor taste? Exploitative of boulders? As always, let us know below!

]]>https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/08/01/did-stone-brewings-berlin-beer-rally-send-the-wrong-message/feed/31stone-berlin-beer-bashingJimstone-berlin-beer-bashingbeer-bashgreg-riles-crowdInfographic: Guess the World’s Most Popular Beer (You’re likely WRONG!!)https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/07/24/infographic-guess-the-worlds-most-popular-beer-youre-likely-wrong/
https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/07/24/infographic-guess-the-worlds-most-popular-beer-youre-likely-wrong/#commentsThu, 24 Jul 2014 15:48:51 +0000http://beerandwhiskeybros.com/?p=11077The fine folks over at Finances Online have pumped out another interesting beer-related infographic, this one featuring a world traveler (let’s call him “Steve”) who trots around the globe discovering which countries drink the most beer, which countries pay the most (and least) for a beer, and which country spends the most on beer per-person (hint: they travel in fried out combi’s on a hippie trail with heads full of zombie).

At the end of the infographic they even share the world’s most popular beer, which I wouldn’t have guessed if you gave me 100 tries. Interesting! Worldly! Easy to cut and paste and create a post!

If there’s one thing “Big Beer” knows how to do, it’s get bigger. It seems like these global mega-brewers are always bidding, buying, merging with or making a hostile play for one another. Imagine if they put that energy into making better beer!

The freshest rumor is that A-B InBev, the world’s largest brewing conglomerate and makers of delightful beverages like Budweiser and the wonderfully marketed Shock Top, are looking to gobble up rival SABMiller to create a brewing behemoth that would produce 30% of the beer in the world.

This makes sense in some regards, as there are efficiencies of scale when two big companies like these come together. You can eliminating redundant employees (they’re only people!), squeeze struggling suppliers even more tightly, and further solidify your ironclad grip on distribution channels. You know, fun stuff like that!

While there are some hurdles to such a merger – SAB Miller would likely have to dissolve its MillerCoors joint venture with Molson Coors to satisfy anti-trust watchdogs – the main obstacle standing in A-B InBev’s way seems to be SABMIller’s reluctance to get into bed with the bloated brewer of bland beers.

It’s kind of like Pepe Le Pew and that poor cat Penelope who’s always getting a white stripe painted down her back. She’ll do anything to avoid the embrace of that damned skunk!

In the case of SABMiller, that means getting bigger fast, too big for A-B InBev to gobble up. This is the same move SABMiller made when they defensively bought Fosters in 2011.

There’s been talk of SABMiller merging with Diagio, makers of Guinness and various other adult beverages. But that isn’t likely because buying the whole business would create management and anti-trust issues, and Diageo doesn’t want to sell off just its beer portfolio.

There’s been speculation that SABMiller might try to acquire Castel, a French wine and beer producer that’s big in Africa. But that move might actually make them MORE attractive to A-B InBev.

Just like the cartoon, it’s quite likely that SABMIller will run out of escape routes and find itself squirming in the arms of their overly amorous suitor. “Come wiz me to ze Casbah – we shall make beautiful musick togezzer!”

While this is all speculation, it’s gaining traction in the business press, much in the same way the Anheuser-Busch / InBev merger did several years back. Smoke, fire, etc.

The impact such a merger might have on craft brewers remains unclear, but I’d certainly rather see these two giants messing with each other than trying to acquire more craft breweries. Better SABMiller than New Belgium or Dogfish Head, I guess.

Recent data shows that light beer sales will hit a 10-year low in 2015, another bleak milestone for this titanic beer category.

But even as the S.S. Lite Beer begins to nosedive after hitting an iceberg with interesting facial hair (obviously craft brewers bringing them down), the makers of Bud Light and Coors Light are busy fighting over how the deck chairs are arranged instead of giving their full attention to righting the ship.

According to Advertising Age, Bud Light’s parent company A-B InBev has blown the whistle on MillerCoors for claiming that Coors Light has “The World’s Most Refreshing Can.”

This is how they choose to spend their energy?

It all part of a moronic packaging arms race. First came Bud Light’s “vented can” featuring “a first-of-its-kind self contained venting tab that delivers the world’s smoothest drinking experience in a can.”

Not to be out-vented, MillerCoors fired back with their Coors Light double-vented wide mouth can, which they claimed created a “smoother, more refreshing pour,” making it “The World’s Most Refreshing Can.”

Instead of jumping right up to a quad-vent design, which surely would have made Bud Light the “smoothest, most refreshing, EASY DRINKIN’EST BEER IN THE WHOLE GODDAM UNIVERSE!!!,” A-B InBev decided the time was right to turn tail and tattle.

So they went to the National Advertising Division, a self-policing ad industry group that reviews adverting claims for truthfulness, and complained that Coors Light’s use of the tagline the “World’s Most Refreshing Can” was a bogus claim.

The NAD decided that the issue wasn’t worth addressing, but instead of shelving the matter, they passed the complaint on to the Federal Trade Commission. That’s right – the issue was too trivial for an industry council, so they passed it on to the federal government. Your tax dollars at work folks!

Almost a year later (and long after MillerCoors stopped claiming to have “The World’s Most Refreshing Can”), the FTC has finally weighed in on the dispute, saying, well, it isn’t worth weighing in on.

They recently sent MillerCoors a letter stating “we have determined not to recommend enforcement action at this time,” but reserved the right to do so in the future if Coors Light once again started making crazy claims about their cans.

So as the band plays on and Leonardo DiCaprio works to save his uptown girl from a watery grave, AB In-Bev and MillerCoors are rolling around on the deck in their tuxedo tails fighting over who has the right to claim that their beer can has the smoothest, most refreshing pour.

And to think just a few years ago, these two were perched on the bow of the boat, happily cruising along with their arms outstretched and shouting, “I’m the king of the world!!!

Those damn icebergs will get you every time.

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]]>https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/07/11/light-beer-makers-fighting-over-whose-can-is-most-refreshing-as-the-whole-ship-sinks/feed/15sinking-canJimsinking-canNew Shock Top Video Campaign Calls Out Craft Beers for “Trying Too Hard”https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/07/09/new-shock-top-video-campaign-calls-out-craft-beers-for-trying-too-hard/
https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/07/09/new-shock-top-video-campaign-calls-out-craft-beers-for-trying-too-hard/#commentsWed, 09 Jul 2014 15:51:08 +0000http://beerandwhiskeybros.com/?p=11026
If you needed another clue that craft-beer-pretender Shock Top is the baby of Big Beer, look no further than these “viral” videos from Canadian ad agency Anomaly that rolled onto Shock Top’s YouTube channel last week. They are just what you might expect from a large corporation (A-B InBev) trying to act like one of the cool kids.

In this series of clearly staged videos, Shock Top mascot “Wedgehead” – a talking orange slice with a mohawk – accosts various actors “unsuspecting beer lovers” in the beer aisle and at the bar, peppering them with quick-witted regular-guy quips about their appearance, their ability to attract the opposite sex, and other clearly scripted “spontaneous” conversations.

The nature of these videos fit perfectly with the Shock Top brand – a highly calculated attempt to come off as authentic, but missing the mark by just enough to show that you’re a complete fraud.

There are the actors, each clearly chosen to represent a demographic group Shock Top wants to target (one girl even has lots of tattoos – HOW GENUINE!).

There’s the messaging, clearly on-brand, but hiding behind “irreverent” humor that supports the tagline, “Listen, you know I’m a good beer, I know I’m a good beer – we don’t have to talk about it, let’s chat about something else.”

There’s the computer enhanced graphics in the beer aisle videos, made to look just like the real thing (but not the real thing). Yup – that’s Shock Top in a nutshell.

Along with attempting to paint itself as a hip alternative to the mainstream, Shock Top also uses Wedgehead (ugh- that hurt to type) to take potshots at their craft beer competitors (you know, beers that are actually made in small batches by independent breweries).

In one of the videos entitled “My dad is losing his Mohawk,” the edgy wedge proclaims, “You guys know these beers…they’re trying too hard, you know what I mean? Fifteen names? Wildebeest Three Headed Unicorn? What is that?” The bar patrons he’s talking to titter with laughter, because they clearly agree – those other craft beers are SO PRETENTIOUS, but not you, Wedgehead – you’re our cool pal!

I’ve posted all the videos I can find below (sorry) so you can check them out for yourself. And if you happen to be wandering around the streets of Toronto, look out for the talking Shock Top billboard – god help you.

I guess the good news here is that the Big Boys will always show their true colors; their attempt to come off as totally non-corporate couldn’t feel MORE corporate. Hopefully that’ll stop some folks from confusing this pretender for an honest-to-goodness craft brewery.

St. Louis Public Radio has put together an interesting set of animated GIFs that show side-by-side comparisons of Budweiser’s 15 million-barrels-per-year brewing operation and Perennial Artisan Ales’ much more hands-on setup.

I had my beer snob hackles up a bit before I clicked the link, ready to sneer upon Bud’s weapons of mass production – I fully expected to root for Perennial’s hero brewers (who I correctly assumed would all be sporting luxurious facial hair) as they handcrafted their artisan ales.

But instead I came away impressed by the level of automation and scale that Bud has brought to the brewing process. If only they played nicer in the marketplace (and brewed better beer).

My favorite image is probably the one at the end, which features an AB employee with a headlamp raking out large beechwood shavings in the bottom of an enormous secondary fermenter – it looks like he’s in the hold of a cargo ship. Not everything is done by robots!

Anyway, “handcrafting” seems like a lot of work, and my guess is that the bearded boys from Perennial would be perfectly happy to push a button instead of cranking a mash paddle over a steaming batch of wort.

So what would you prefer: Brewing by hand or through the miracle of modern engineering?

So this happened. I have a few cans of Miller Lite laying around after I bought a sixer of the stuff for a Today.com piece on retro beer cans (and yes, it pained me to purchase it!). I decided to climb down off of my high horse and give it a try, but I discovered something was wrong – it didn’t taste quite how I remembered it from when I was a lad…Check out the video above to see how I remedied the situation. Also check out the major hangover eyebags I’m sporting in the second shot – damn you Dragon’s Milk!

I’m a chameleon, a shape-shifter. Well at least I am on the Internet. When someone wants to know a nugget of personal information about me, I’m always changing form. Why give up usable data about myself when I don’t have to?

Country of Residence? Moldova.

Phone Number? It starts with 555…

Gender? Questionable.

Sexual Preference? Metrosexual.

This is especially true when it comes to age gates on beer sites, to which I gleefully submit anything but my real date of birth.

Age gates are meant to be the child-proof medicine caps of the online world, but any 10 year-old who can subtract 21 from 2014 (or who simply knows that being born in 1971 makes you very, very old) can defeat them.

Not only are age gates useless, they are annoying as hell. The last thing we want in this day of point-click-and-get is some unnecessary lawyer-spam standing between us and our content. And it’s not like these flimsy protections are legally required – the alcohol industry is left to “self regulation” in this regard by the Federal Trade Commission.

There are three kinds of age gates. The worst kind requires you to enter a day, month and year of birth (looking at you, Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada). I always type in random numbers or select wildly from the drop down menus that some sites have, and I get a particular thrill from indicating I was born in 1903. That’s right, I’m 111 years young – now show me that goddamn IPA!

A newer wrinkle is the single click age gate. While these are more tolerable, they still add a step while remaining absolutely worthless. Brewers like San Diego’s Modern Times might make this extra little hurdle look attractive, but this approach still has a whiff of greasy lawyer emanating from it, something that the craft beer world really doesn’t need.

The best kind of age gate is like the one used by Surly Brewing – there isn’t one. You simply go to their website and are allowed to access content without having to jump through any hoops. I guess brewers like Surly, Oskar Blues, The Alchemist and many others have finally figured out that if YouPorn doesn’t have an age gate (or so I’m told), why should pictures of beautiful beer be restricted?

A little clicking around the web makes me think that age gates are largely becoming a thing of the past. Most smaller breweries with newer sites seem to have abandoned them all together. It’s mostly the big craft brewers or those with antiquated sites (or both) that are still requiring you to enter your Social Security number and submit a urine sample before proceeding into the shocking world of online beer brochures.

Hopefully age gates will soon become a thing of the past, something that was once quite annoying but is now fondly remembered as being a quaint part of our history, like the dial-up modem or Charo. Coochie-Coochie!

]]>https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/05/21/dear-craft-brewers-enough-with-the-age-gates/feed/17scardy-cat-age-gateJimscardy-cat-age-gateCraft or Crap?: The Beer That Brad Pitt Tossed to Matthew McConaughey in New Orleanshttps://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/05/19/craft-or-crap-the-beer-that-brad-pitt-tossed-to-matthew-mcconaughey-in-new-orleans/
https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/05/19/craft-or-crap-the-beer-that-brad-pitt-tossed-to-matthew-mcconaughey-in-new-orleans/#commentsMon, 19 May 2014 17:20:52 +0000http://beerandwhiskeybros.com/?p=10983

McConaughey was hanging out on the balcony of Saints quarterback Drew Brees, which just happens to be across the street from Pitts’ New Orleans home. Pitt wandered outside, and a balcony-to-balcony bromance budded, which wound up with Pitt tossing McConaughey a can of beer.

While I don’t usually get into celebrity gossip (especially when it involves pretty dudes), this story instantly caught my attention because as a beer geek I needed to know one thing – what kind of beer did Honey Bear Boy toss to the Bongo Kid?

This matters, because it impacts how I judge these guys, or at least Pitt who was the giver of the beer. I like the acting work of both (especially McConaughey lately, who seems to have discovered he’s more than a guy who looks good in a towel) but the beer that was shared could change things.

There’s a lot of silver and blue on that can – was it a Natural Light Tallboy? Because that makes Pitt a man who prefers mass-produced frat beer to well-crafted artisan beverages. What kind of self-respecting artist would do that?! I couldn’t blame McConaughey for drinking it, because refusing Pitt’s projectile would make him look rude and out of touch with the common man.

Was it an Abita, the hometown beer of New Orleans? There was a movement to elect Pitt as the mayor of New Orleans a few years back, and supporting the local flavor would only make him more lovable to his fellow Nolinians (I may have just made this word up). And we all know how much McConaughey’s character Rust Cohle on True Detective enjoys his Lone Star, so I’m sure the real world McConaughey would happily knock back the New Orleans equivalent.

Was it a craft beer? This was my hope from the start, that Pitt air mailed a finely crafted beer with a dank and sticky hop profile that his balcony buddy would enjoy. I want to live in a world where cool people drink cool beer (and throw it around balconies in a cool city).

A little forensic photo analysis has revealed that the beer was…Hopitoulas from NOLA Brewing!

Zooming in on a picture taken after the toss shows the back label art.

This nice image courtesy of CraftCans.com reveals that it was indeed a craft beer!

Well alright, alright, alright!

Here’s how the beer is described on the brewery’s website:

This 6.5% ABV ale is a West Coast style India Pale Ale that combines six malts and six hops with additional dry hopping for three weeks. It takes about a month and a half to make each batch and we think it is worth the wait. Hints of pine and citrus with a powerful, yet balanced hoppy flavor, Hopitoulas packs a punch that you won’t forget. Available on draft and in 16 ounce cans.

So there you have it – the perfect beer! West Coast IPA for that sticky resinous flavor! Locally brewed for Mayor Pitt! A tallboy can – extra hipster cred (not to mention extra beer)!

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I was so happy to find out the bros were sharing an honest-to-goodness craft beer instead of some industrial light lager. Not only does it make me appreciate their taste (or at least Pitt’s for buying the stuff), but it also warms my heart to see craft beer making inroads everywhere in our culture, even at the top of the pop culture food chain.

]]>https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/05/19/craft-or-crap-the-beer-that-brad-pitt-tossed-to-matthew-mcconaughey-in-new-orleans/feed/29beer-zoomJimcraft-or-crapZooming in on a picture taken after the toss shows the back label art.This nice image courtesy of CraftCans.com reveals that it was indeed a craft beer!How I got Blacklisted for Mentioning Samuel Adams’ PR Companyhttps://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/04/25/how-i-got-blacklisted-for-mentioning-samuel-adams-pr-company/
https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2014/04/25/how-i-got-blacklisted-for-mentioning-samuel-adams-pr-company/#commentsFri, 25 Apr 2014 17:40:21 +0000http://beerandwhiskeybros.com/?p=10970

Boxes. So many boxes. Box upon box full of beer arrive at my house and pile up in the front hall. They come from brewers around the country who would like me to write about their beer for Today.com or FSR Magazine.

I’ve been a little lax in keeping up lately, letting two weeks worth of samples collect next to the front door until my wife asked if we were opening our own UPS Store. Message received, I took some time this past Saturday to open everything up and see what treasures lie within.

There were things there from the usual suspects – Stone, New Belgium, Kona, and several other brewers who regularly send me their wares. But I realized someone was missing – Samuel Adams.

Samuel Adams has a great PR company – the send samples, they regularly invite me to events, and they’ve always been super responsive when I’ve sent a request their way. But I realized I hadn’t heard a peep out of them since January, when I wrote about a conflict between Lagunitas and Samuel Adams. Strange.

A brief background for those of you who missed that story. Lagunitas founder Tony Magee claimed that Samuel Adams was using shady “big beer” tactics to launch their new West Coast style IPA, called Rebel IPA. Magee said Boston Beer was specifically targeting the bar and restaurant taps held by Lagunitas IPA and other West Coast IPAs for takeover, something that craft brewers don’t do (distributors try it all the time, but the brewers stay above the fray, according to Magee).

I sent a list of questions to both Lagunitas and the PR company that reps Samuel Adams, and posted those answers here on the site without editing a word of them. I mentioned in the post that Magee answered my questions and that Jim Koch supplied a statement through his PR company.

And now I’ve had zero contact with the Samuel Adams camp since I hit “publish.” No packages, no emails, nothing – just total radio silence since the day that post went live.

I reached out to the PR company to confirm what I already suspected – I’ve been cut off. But the reason given was surprising.

I was told that my crime was mentioning Samuel Adams had a PR firm in the Lagunitas piece. What?

I can see why they might be sensitive to this fact coming to light, especially because Tony Magee used it to paint Samuel Adams as being too big and corporate when he responded to my questions, saying:

You mentioned to me that you were waiting for an answer from the other brewer’s PR firm. There is no PR company responding for Lagunitas here and that in and of itself might tell you something about the nature of things.

But Tony’s wrong – lots and lot of small, friendly, crafty brewers have PR companies. These brewers grew up in the digital age and know that sometimes you need help to get the word out about your brewery. It’s not a valid knock on Samuel Adams, especially because of their size – a company that large better have a PR firm! It should also be noted that breweries that don’t have PR firms usually employ a PR person or a whole PR team to manage and promote the brewery’s public image (including Lagunitas). Everyone’s doing it – outsourcing this function is really no big deal.

But apparently mentioning it is, which I find baffling.

Now’s a good time to mention that the PR firm said it was their decision to back away from me – no one from Samuel Adams was mentioned as being part of the decision-making process.

Of course who knows what the truth is – these are spin doctors we’re dealing with, after all. It could be simply that the PR company wanted to remain invisible and I crossed that line (which is a very weird line to draw), or perhaps it’s the fact that I shed more light on a story that could make Samuel Adams look bad in the eyes of some. Whatever the real reason, I know this – it’s bullshit.

I’ve been a defender of Samuel Adams as a craft brewer on these pages, and have featured their products several times on the TODAY Show’s website. Sharing these stories was a great way to introduce a mainstream audience to the wonders of craft beer through a brand that they are comfortable with. I’ve written about Utopias, their new cans, their Longshot homebrew winners, the wedding beer Brewlywed, their Boston Marathon beer, etc., etc., etc.

And now a single mention of having a PR firm on my personal blog gets me blacklisted? That’s crazy.

Of course sharing this story with you folks probably won’t help, but I always try to be honest and give you some insights on what happens behind the curtain in the craft beer world. I don’t really care if I miss out on Samuel Adams samples (although I’ll miss the Utopias) or if I’m denied access to Jim Koch moving forward (who’s always been charming and gracious when I’ve spoken with him).

I just think it’s a shame that being transparent and fair got me in the doghouse – that doesn’t sound like the craft beer industry I know.

UPDATE: I was contacted by the folks at Samuel Adams a couple of weeks ago, and everything is patched up. They stressed they had no hand in the events described above and would like me to deal with them directly moving forward. Hooray for hoppy happy endings!

The dating website PlentyOfFish.com just released a new study on singles and drinking, and the findings shed interesting light on how our attitudes towards alcohol change as we get more serious about finding a mate.

The study involved 11 million singles between the ages of 21 and 50 who have set up profiles on the dating site. When signing up, users are asked a battery of questions about themselves, meant to help the site’s database better pair them with potential dates and mates.

They are asked about their physical attributes, their education level, what kind of relationship they are looking for, if they want children, the length of their previous relationships, etc. They are also asked about how often they consume alcohol, with the ability to choose one of three answers: often, socially, or never.

Plenty Of Fish correlated all of this data and dug up some interesting nuggets about how alcohol consumption and mating behaviors intertwine. As it turns out, people who are looking to start a serious relationship are less likely to drink alcohol.

Boozing and Relationship Intent

According to the data, men who are looking for marriage are 82 percent more likely to answer “no” to the “do you drink?” question, while women who want to marry are 73 percent more likely to indicate that they do not drink alcohol.

The opposite is true amongst people looking for more casual encounters. Women who are not looking for a committed relationship are 80 percent more likely to say they drink “often,” while men looking for a little non-committal fun are 55 percent more likely to indicate that they drink often.

A Clear Head

“I definitely think that age is playing factor here,” said Sarah Gooding, a PR manager and dating coach for Plenty of Fish. “When you are younger and looking for a casual relationship, you’re likely going to the bar every Friday and Saturday night.”

“But as you are getting into your 30s and 40s and you’re looking for something more serious, you’re not going to the bar every night,” she to B&WB. “Plus, you know that alcohol can cloud your judgment, and you want a level head when you’re trying to meet someone for marriage.”

Simply put, the data show we tend to drink less as we grow up and settle down, and we tend to drink more when we’re young and looking for a good time (and not necessarily a good girl or a good boy).

White Lies

Of course there’s always the possibility that people looking for a long-term relationship consume alcohol as frequently as everyone else, but they downplay their drinking habits on their profiles in order to make themselves seem more stable and upstanding to a possible mate. It is the Internet, after all.

Gooding is confident that this isn’t the case.

“I think the people who say that they don’t drink at all are being very honest, because not drinking can actually work against them in the dating scene,” Gooding said. “If people were going to lie about their drinking habits, it would probably be by claiming to be a ‘social’ drinker, because so many singles that indicate that they drink socially – it’s the safest answer.”

What Are You Having?

Other findings that came out of the study show that wine is the adult beverage that single women say they drink most often (it enjoys a nearly twice the popularity with the ladies than beer), while single men say they prefer beer by a very large margin (almost five times more than wine, their next favorite tipple).

This is good news for both sexes, because their date likes the way their favorite drink looks in their hand. 26.6% of men think that the most attractive drink for their date to order is red wine, while 23.3% of women think that the most attractive drink for their date to order is a pint of craft beer (which makes me the sexiest man alive).

14.1% of singles think that the most attractive drink for their date to order is something without alcohol. We can only assume these are people looking to tie the knot immediately.

“A lot of this is confirming common sense,” Gooding said about the findings of the study, “but I think that it’s still interesting when data supports common sense.”